That, combined with the high-resolution sensor, makes the Q3 43 a camera that’s at home in almost any scenario. Having shot with it for a week, the 43mm focal length lends itself wonderfully to street portraiture, producing stills with a real sense of intimacy. Should you need to re-frame, you have a whole lot of pixels to play with.
There are many things that make the Leica Q3 43 truly unique. No other compact ships with a 43mm prime lens. And you don’t find too many cameras of any description with a 60MP full-frame sensor inside, let alone one that looks and feels this good to shoot with. In short, the Q3 43 is everything a compact camera should be. If you can afford its inordinate price tag, it’s one you’ll never want to leave home without.
(Image credit: Future)
Leica Q3 43: Specs
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Leica Q3 43
Sensor
Full-frame
Lens
43mm f/2
Photo
60.3MP, plus crop modes
Video
8K up to 30fps, 4K up to 60fps, 1080 up to 120fps
Burst shooting
Up to 15fps
LCD
3-inch tilting touchscreen, 1.84m-dot
EVF
5.76m-dot, 120fps refresh
Dimensions
130 x 80.3 x 97.6mm
Weight
27.2oz / 772g (with battery)
Battery
2,200mAh, up to 350 shots
Leica Q3 43: Price and availability
Launched on 26 September 2024 Priced at $6,295 / £5,900 / AU$11,890
The Leica Q3 43 was released on 26 September 2024. It’s priced at $6,295 / £5,900 / AU$11,890, which means it will set you back more than many of the best mirrorless cameras . It’s an undeniably premium piece of kit with niche appeal. Red-dot cameras never come cheap, and what you’re paying for here goes beyond the spec sheet; it’s the Leica design, build quality, and shooting experience.
The 43 is slightly more expensive than the standard Leica Q3, which is priced at $5,995 / £5,300 / AU$9,790. At this end of the price spectrum, though, you won’t be choosing between the two cameras based on cost. Instead, it’ll come down to whether you’d prefer your full-frame Leica compact with a 28mm or 43mm focal length.
Leica Q3 43: Design
Identical body to the Leica Q3 Modern, minimalist design Tactile controls and tilting touchscreen
Besides the lens, everything about the 43 is physically identical to the Leica Q3. That means you get the same weighty, magnesium die-cast construction, with the same beautifully pared-back design and the same wonderfully tactile control layout. There’s nothing quite like it at any price point, and you really have to hold the Q3 43 in your hands to appreciate the way it feels.
Everything about this camera is premium, from the weighting of the body to the perfectly judged resistance of the control rings. This is a camera that you want to handle, and one that rewards you with satisfying physical feedback at every turn. The manual focus ring is just one example: it’s so enjoyable to use that you might forget the Q3 43 also has an excellent autofocus option. It’s the same story with the macro ring, which twists to reveal a different set of markings for close-up focusing.
This is the kind of camera that you’ll come back to, when it’s sitting on your kitchen counter or entrance hall table, just to pick it up and appreciate it. It’s a camera that you’ll never want to leave home without – not only because you want to shoot stills with it, but because the Q3 43 makes it such a joy to do so.
That also extends to the interface, both physical and digital. Pressing and holding to customize buttons makes it easy to adapt the user experience to your liking, while the quick touch menu on the screen feels responsive and intuitive.
That’s not to say it’s a perfect camera. Like the Leica Q3, the 43 has a small indentation on the rear which serves as a thumb rest, but the compact dimensions mean there isn’t much room for ergonomic sculpting – there are more comfortable cameras to grip over long periods.
As in our review of the Leica Q3, we also felt that the tilting touchscreen isn’t perfectly implemented. While it’s theoretically useful when you’re shooting from the hip, it’s not the easiest display to pull out and adjust. During our time with the 43, we were more naturally drawn to the high-res 5.76m-dot viewfinder.
Really, though, it’s very hard to pick fault with a camera that feels as good to use as the Q3 43. Shoot with it for a day, and you’ll wonder how you’ll ever fully enjoy a different camera again.
Leica Q3 43: Features and performance
Phase detection autofocus Lens-based image stabilization Single SD UHS-II card slot
In most respects, the Leica Q3 43 shares its spec sheet with the Leica Q3. That includes the 60.3MP full-frame sensor, 8K 30p video recording, and Leica’s best phase-detection autofocus to date, complete with human tracking that’s broadly sticky. And like the Leica Q3, it also has some features which highlight its status as an everyday camera – albeit a very expensive one.
There’s the maximum burst speed of 15fps, which you can only use with the electronic shutter. You also get just one SD UHS-II card slot, while the lens-based image stabilization still can’t compete with the best. You can read more fully about how these features perform in our Leica Q3 review, but the takeaway is that this isn’t a camera with the outright performance to rival the best mirrorless cameras.
What you’re getting here is not a heavyweight workhorse, but a sublime tool for everyday use. That’s reflected in features such as Leica Looks: preset image styles which can be loaded via the Leica Fotos app over Wi-Fi, allowing less-experienced photographers to achieve different and dynamic effects with no editing. The original DNG files are kept, so it’s non-destructive.
Leica Q3 43: Image quality
60.3MP full-frame sensor Fixed 43mm f/2 prime lens Digital cropping up to 150mm
Where the Leica Q3 has an uncropped 28mm field of view similar to that of your smartphone’s primary camera, the 43 mimics human vision with its APO-Summicron 43mm f/2 ASPH lens. That gives you a slightly tighter crop than the more familiar 50mm prime, but a wider angle than the Q3, or any 35mm lenses you might have used. While it’s an unfamiliar number, it’s also an incredibly intuitive one.
By offering a natural, distortion-free view, that glass offers an intimate perspective. It’s one that invites you to look at the world and capture it, whether that’s a portrait, a street scene or something else entirely. Both when framing and reviewing what you’ve shot, there’s a sense of scenes being true to life, both in stills and video.
Specially designed for the 43, the APO-Summicron lens is tightly packaged and pin-sharp. Thanks to its fast f/2 aperture it’s capable of soft backgrounds and beautifully smooth bokeh, strengthening its credentials as a portrait star. We also detected minimal distortion in stills.
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(Image credit: Chris Rowlands)
(Image credit: Chris Rowlands)
(Image credit: Chris Rowlands)
(Image credit: Chris Rowlands)
(Image credit: Chris Rowlands)
(Image credit: Chris Rowlands)
Paired with the Q3 43’s 60.3MP full-frame sensor, this is a lens that can produce stunning images in a whole range of scenarios, from high-contrast backlit portraits to detailed macro shots. Low light wasn’t an issue either: the lens and sensor pairing seemed able to gather a fair amount of light, and where it was necessary to bump up the ISO we didn’t notice a huge loss of detail in the fine grain of noise.
Like the Leica Q3, you have the option to apply a digital crop. This doesn’t alter the perspective or depth of field, but it does give you the versatility to frame in on subjects. Starting at 43mm, you can apply the digital crop all the way up to 150mm, which is notably tighter than the 90mm maximum of the Leica Q3. It’s a useful trick, although I would generally prefer to crop in after the fact. Helpfully, the crop is only applied to JPEG files, with the full area retained in DNG raw files.
On the standard setting, JPEG images out of the Q3 43 are pleasingly sharp and dynamic. Colors can feel a little understated, but there’s a realism to JPEG stills that nicely complements the 43mm field of view. That said, we’d always advise recording shots in both JPEG and Leica’s DNG format, to give yourself maximum editing flexibility.
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(Image credit: Chris Rowlands)
(Image credit: Chris Rowlands)
(Image credit: Chris Rowlands)
Should I buy the Leica Q3 43?
(Image credit: Future)
Buy it if…
Don’t buy it if…
How I tested the Leica Q3 43
(Image credit: Future)
I used the camera for a week I shot more than 300 stills I took pictures in a range of conditions
Premium or not, the Leica Q3 43 is pitched as the kind of compact you’ll want to take with you everywhere – so that’s exactly what I did. With a loan period of only a week, I made the most of every day: it went wherever I went. That meant taking the 43 about town, on a drive to the beach, and just about everywhere else.
I shot more than 300 stills over the course of seven days, covering a whole range of scenes and conditions. That included the brightest sunlight that an autumn day in the UK could muster, the more familiar cloudy skies of September, the honey tones of the golden hour, and dark nights sat by a fire pit.
Because the 43mm prime lens is what distinguishes this edition from the standard Q3, I paid particular attention to how that felt when framing different subjects in different scenarios. That spanned taking portraits, street shots, landscapes, and close-ups, to get a full impression of how it feels to work with that unique frame of view.
First reviewed October 2024
